economics reporter steve liesman is here to explain. the mystery, what is it? >> it's really the product, as you know. we have two separate surveys. the household survey, that's where we get the unemployment rate. it's the result of a nationwide survey of around 60,000 people. sounds big, right? well, it's historically very volatile. the payroll survey, that's where we get the number of jobs, the 114,000. that comes from a survey of around 140,000 employers. they submit actual data. it's favored by economists because it's steadier. but guess what? it's also subject to revisions. according to this report, we had 114,000 jobs in september. the household survey showed with 7.8% unemployment, it came from being 12.1 million unemployed divided by 151.1 million people in the labor force. they count themselves as available for work. what happened? what happened is the number of unemployed in this survey fell by 456,000. the number of people who had jobs went up by 873,000. that came partly, though, from an increase of people who are working part time for economic reasons, and there may be a sea
